Thursdays are my busy days at school, so perhaps
they’re not the best picture of my work, but frankly, every day is a
busy day at RFIS.
Last Saturday, August 20th, marked the one-year anniversary of my arrival in Cameroon. Feeling both blessed and accomplished, I decided to throw a small party for myself on Wednesday after school. I invited a motley assortment of friends: my boss, neighbor, and close friend Lois; the Korean PE teacher who recently moved to my area of town; the new Bible teacher at RFIS; and a good friend from Cameroon who coaches basketball at RFIS. Only after making these plans did I realize that I was the only U.S. citizen who would be there; my two Canadian colleagues formed the majority.
I look forward to coming home from school on Wednesdays to a kitchen full of fresh fruits and vegetables, purchased at the market and cleaned by my very efficient househelp, Doris. This week, I added chicken to my usual items including papayas, carrots, onions, and tomatoes. Cameroonians often serve chicken at celebrations, as it's more expensive than fish or beef, so I decided that I would follow that cultural norm. However, this was the first time I had asked Doris to buy a whole chicken in the market, and I wasn't sure what to expect. I've been to the main market a few times and smiled at the vendors gripping docile chickens by their feet. My stomach is strong, but I still didn't want to deal with feathers, so I wrote "1 whole chicken, cleaned" on my list and hoped for the best.
When I came home from school, the chicken was in Ziploc bag in my freezer because I still haven't explained the difference between the fridge and the freezer to Doris. Immediately, I shook my head-it still had its feet. "Okay," I calmed myself, "There's a lot of meat on the feet. Maybe I can boil them for broth." I pulled the chicken out, hoping it wasn't too solid yet, and started thawing it in the sink while I chopped and liquefied chiles for its sauce.
With the sauce ready, I steeled myself to hack the chicken into chunks that would fit into my frying pan. While maneuvering the bird so that I could chop off the feet, I flipped it over and jumped back, yelling to no one in particular, "It still has a head!" Only slightly disturbed, I continued my dismemberment, discovering along the way that the organs had been left in along with the head and the feet. I slipped them into a plastic bag with the head and feet and left Doris a note that she could take them home if she wanted them. It wouldn't be that hard to learn how to prepare and eat them, but sometimes I don't have the energy for such undertakings.
With the most unpleasant task over, I browned and simmered the bird, boiled rice with herbs, sliced an avocado and set out the table for my friends. Bursting with Mexican flavor, the chicken was a hit—one friend who doesn't even usually like chicken complimented me on it. It looks like this little adventure may need to be repeated.
A weekend day in my life in Cameroon.
This morning at a women's breakfast, we sang my favorite French worship song. It was the first time I had seen the words written down, which meant it was also the first time that I understood the first half. I wanted to share it with you, especially as we approach the celebration of Jesus' resurrection and our life and joy in him.
Je suis dans la joie
Je chanterai de tout cœur le merveilles de mon papa Yahweh
Il m’a ôté des ténèbres, il m’a délivré de tout pèche.
Mon Papa est fidèle ; il ne m’abandonne jamais.
Je n’ai plus rien à craindre car Yahweh m’a libéré.
Je suis dans la joie, une joie immense.
Je suis dans l’émotion car Yahweh m’a libéré.
I am in the joy
I will sing with all my heart the wonders of my dad Yahweh
He has removed me from darkness, he has delivered me from all sin.
I no longer have anything to fear because Yahweh has liberated me.
I am in the joy, an immense joy,
I am so excited because Yahweh has liberated me.
I made some delicious peanut butter ice cream using a super-easy recipe.
This week was Special Emphasis Week at the school, with a focus on Self Awareness. Within this theme, we shared a lot from Psalm 139, praying that the students would understand that they are created by God and very much beloved by him. On Thursday, the female teachers spoke to the girls about our worth in Christ, especially regarding our beauty. We read them Psalm 139: 14 "I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are your works, and that my soul knows very well."
In the afternoon, I met with my small group, which is composed of four Cameroonian students, one Korean, and one American. As we talked about the message in the morning, two of the Cameroonians mentioned that the verse reminded them of a song. I asked if they would sing it for me, and was almost in tears by the end at the beautiful way it summarized everything we had been talking about this week. I wish I could sing it for you, but the lyrics are as follows:
I am joyfully made.
I am wonderfully made.
I resemble God.
I belong to him.
That is why the devil trembles
Whenever he hears me say
I am God's own
and the apple of his eye.
The van opens like an oven. Hot air rolls over us, and we quickly slide open windows as we pile in. The crickets and birds beat a rhythm, God’s soundtrack to our departure.
Life is hard and God is good. Those words have been my song through the last couple weeks. Sometimes I feel my "to do" list looming over me, waiting to crash down on my head if I miss planning for a class or responding to an e-mail, if I forget to pick up money or pay my househelp, if I miss an appointment or don't plan well for a speaking engagement. Psalm 86 expresses so well what I feel in those moments:
Psalm 86
A prayer of David.
1 Hear me, LORD, and answer me,
for I am poor and needy.
2 Guard my life, for I am faithful to you;
save your servant who trusts in you.
You are my God; 3 have mercy on me, Lord,
for I call to you all day long.
4 Bring joy to your servant, Lord,
for I put my trust in you.
5 You, Lord, are forgiving and good,
abounding in love to all who call to you.
6 Hear my prayer, LORD;
listen to my cry for mercy.
7 When I am in distress, I call to you,
because you answer me.
8 Among the gods there is none like you, Lord;
no deeds can compare with yours.
9 All the nations you have made
will come and worship before you, Lord;
they will bring glory to your name.
10 For you are great and do marvelous deeds;
you alone are God.
11 Teach me your way, LORD,
that I may rely on your faithfulness;
give me an undivided heart,
that I may fear your name.
12 I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart;
I will glorify your name forever.
13 For great is your love toward me;
you have delivered me from the depths,
from the realm of the dead.
14 Arrogant foes are attacking me, O God;
ruthless people are trying to kill me—
they have no regard for you.
15 But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God,
slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.
16 Turn to me and have mercy on me;
show your strength in behalf of your servant;
save me, because I serve you
just as my mother did.
17 Give me a sign of your goodness,
that my enemies may see it and be put to shame,
for you, LORD, have helped me and comforted me.
Sarah Dorsey D'13 asked, "What is the coolest animal you've seen so far?"
I haven't sought out animals all that much yet. In February, I'm taking a trip to the far north, so I'll hopefully get to check out the animal reserve while I'm there. However, I did see this really awesome bird in near Bamenda at Lake Awing. I didn't get a picture of it myself, but it was about the size of a large hawk, with lots of scarlet, blue and green.
It turns out that the guy who lived below me in Yaoundé is a birding hobbiest. According to him, it turns out that the bird is a very rare species called Bannerman's Turaco. It lives only in the area around Lake Awing in the northwest region of Cameroon. Pretty cool, huh?
I'm an "educated", young, aesthetically-oriented techie who actually enjoys writing. Blogging should be my thing. But, as you can see, I haven't found the time or motivation to update in quite some time. Yet at the same time, I've had no problems responding to friends' well-scoped questions.
And so, I have an assignment for you. Give me a prompt. You know, like the ones you used to get in high school when they forced you to write essays. Questions that give short answers are fine, but try to ask me a bigger, open-ended questions that's been on your mind. You can give it to me by posting it as a comment or emailing it to me.
Here are a few examples of what you might ask:
- Malaria? Wha really?
- What do you like best about Cameroon? Do you think you'll go back ever?
- How has being there affected your life plans?
- Do you have a car? or a bike? or do you ride the city buses? or taxis? or little mules?
- What is the first thing you're going to do when you get back to America?
- What is the coolest animal you've seen so far?
In turn, I'll post the prompt and my response to it as an new blog entry in the weeks to come. Consider it my New Years' resolution.
Today, my househelp Camilla and I spent the morning at the market getting fruits and vegetables, and then Camilla very obligingly showed me how to properly prepare two traditional dishes, one of which was groundnut soup. Other than fufu and njamma jamma, this is the most Cameroonian meal I can think of. It's well-balanced, nutritious, and could be creatively presented with a sprig of herb or a few peanuts sprinkled on top. Looking for a quick dinner? Skip the meat—the peanuts provide enough protein on their own.
Groundnut soup
1/2 pound beef, cut in one-inch cubes
1 onion
3 tomatoes
1 sprig fresh parsley
2 small stalks celery
1 sprig fresh basil
2 cloves garlic
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
¼ cup unsweetened peanut butter
1 Maggie cube (or soy sauce to taste)
salt to taste
4-5 cups cooked rice
Put the beef in a medium pot. Cover and cook on low heat until the fat has simmered down. Add about 4 cups water and continue cooking until the meat is tender. Remove from the pot, reserving the liquid.
Meanwhile, coarsely chop the onion, tomatoes, parsley, celery, basil, and garlic. Liquefy them in a blender, then add them to the pot. Cook until the liquid is mostly gone, then add the peanut butter, Maggie, and salt. Stir, then add the beef again.
Serve the soup over a bed of rice, with a few pieces of meat on the top. Serves 8.
This evening I returned from what felt like a journey to everywhere in Cameroon. Last Thursday I left right after school to travel to Bamenda, a cool city in Cameroon's northwest, with a family I know from the school. The day after that, we finished the journey to Mamfe, a steamy city in Cameroon's southwest. We stayed in Mamfe for two days before another teacher and I traveled back through Bamenda and up to a village, Bambalang, in the Ndop plain. We enjoyed the village for a day before returning to Bamenda for some relaxation and fellowship in the cooler mountain weather. This morning we hit up the Bamenda food market for some fresh produce, including broccoli, cauliflower, and peas, which are hard to find in the capital, and then returned to Yaounde.
Confused yet? Not to worry. I'll be writing more about what I was doing and posting pictures very soon. Suffice it to say that I thank God that we arrived back safely and that we were blessed in so many ways along the way.
My repertoire of Cameroonian dishes is slowly expanding, most recently to zocalo, which is also called pile. I ate it for the first time in September, and just yesterday got around to trying it for myself. This simple, filling dish consists of mashed ripe plantain with beans. When I mentioned to some Cameroonian friends that I would be making it, they all wanted to come try some! The pot I made fed three children, me, the woman who sold me the palm oil to make it, and had some left for a couple other friends that were delighted to get a little. One commented that I'd done a good job, but could mash it a little more the next time—there were still a few chunks of plantain in it this time.
Some of the ingredients might be hard to find in the U.S. Jennie, one of the girls who tried some, told me that her mom has made it with potatoes. I could see that working, but I think yellow potatoes would be best. I used dried beans that I had already cooked, but canned beans should work just as well if you're in a hurry. Unrefined palm oil gives the dish a lovely orange color (unsurprisingly, it's high in Vitamin A, but also in cholesterol). I doubt you can find it, so some vegetable or olive oil and a bit of achiote (annato) or paprika might do the trick.
Zocalo
8-10 very ripe plantains
2 cups cooked red beans
1-2 onions, chopped roughly
3 tablespoons unrefined palm oil
salt, to taste
Peel the plantains and boil them until very soft. Meanwhile, cook the onion until translucent. When the plantains are easy to pierce with a fork, drain the water. Add the beans, onions, palm oil, and salt and use a potato masher to mash the plantains.
I served this with green beans and carrots that I simply diced and simmered a bit--the combination is fairly Cameroonian.
Bon appetit!
In October, I had the privilege to visit the Kom Multilingual Education Project, where I was amazed at the level of engagement from students and teachers. A few scenes from the school are featured in a video that I posted several weeks ago; please let me know if you are interested in the link to it. This short story is by Godfrey Kain (center right), a Cameroonian who designed many of the materials that the school is using to teach students to read in Kom and then in English.
Thanksgiving may be an American holiday, but all of God's children have cause for an Action of Thanks.
I had started a cooking blog, then realized that my ISP is blocking it, then also realized that I've been remiss in posting on my regular blog, so I decided to combine the two a bit. I'll try to share a bit of my daily life through the food that I've been cooking and the people that I share it with. Enjoy!
I've been experimenting with various starches here, trying to learn to cook with ingredients from the market. After cooking with plantain, I fell in love and began mashing, frying, and boiling them in everything I could think of. This week I finally decided it was time to move on, so I asked my house help, Camilla, to get some manioc from the market. I've seen and cooked with manioc before; it comes from the Andes and is also called yucca. Here, the root is also known as cassava, and as a Cameroonian told me, it is all starch.
I asked for $1 worth of manioc from the market, and wasn't quite expecting what I found when I came home from school. Camilla had returned with what must have been at least five pounds of large brown roots. My roommate asked me if I knew how to prepare the manioc properly, mentioning that it had cyanide on it. ¡Whoa! I didn't realize that could be a problem. Previously, I had cooked with waxed manioc, so perhaps it had already been processed somehow. Concerned, I left a note for Camilla asking if she could explain how to cook this delicious root. What follows is her response:
How to cook manioc: you first take off the skin, then you grate the backs of the manioc a little with a knife before you boil it. (She left me an example in a bowl). You don't have to leave manioc for many days because they can go bad. When you buy it, cook the very day or the next day. Well Megan, I hope when you read this you will understand.
I did understand and followed her instructions, and my bicep is a bit sore from cutting off the tough outer peel—Cameroonian women must be very strong! After peeling, I cut it into big chunks, washed them in a bowl of water, and then boiled them in a large pot. Once they were falling apart, I drained them and let them cool. I tried to pull out the tough fibers in the center (although I missed a couple and had to pick them out as I ate). The next day (for no particular reason other than that was when I had time) I added a cup of water to the pot, brought it to a simmer and used a potato masher to turn it into a piecy paste. When it was stirrable, I threw it 1/2 cup milk powder, dissolved in two minced cloves of garlic and 1/2 of water (those of you in the States might want to try a combination of butter and cream—really, any fattening dairy product should work). I let it simmer until the milk seemed to be absorbed and served it warm. Although the dish isn't typical of Cameroon, my Cameroonian friends seemed to enjoy eating this Ecuadorian side dish, and I'm excited to have lots of leftovers! This is a great dish for anytime when you want to make sure that no one will leave hungry—it's cheap, but very heavy.
In shorter recipe form:
Mashed Manioc/Yucca/Cassava
2-3 manioc roots
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup whole milk
Peel the manioc, getting rid of all of the purplish exterior pieces, then cut it in chunks. Wash the chunks in water. Add them to a pot and bring to a boil. Let simmer until the manioc is tender and falling apart. Drain and let cool. (One traditional Cameroonian dish would stop at this step and serve the root still warm.)
When cold enough to handle, pull the chunks apart into large pieces, removing any tough fibers that you find. Return to the pot and place over low heat. If the chunks are still fairly warm and soft, add the garlic and milk directly. Mash until it forms a soft paste. Serve warm.
Google needs to be careful where it uses its special-occasion mastheads. Here in Cameroon, I can't wear a t-shirt with bones on it because bones are associated with very real, very serious witchcraft. It's offensive not just in a, "oh, that's tacky" way or a "ooo, that's inappropriate" way, but in a fear for your life kind of way. Today, I opened up the Google Cameroon homepage and saw this seasonal Halloween tribute. It was nice and homey for me as an American. But for a Cameroonian, it's much worse than inappropriate.
These things are fine for Western Google sites, but Google needs to make itself a little plainer and safer for high-context regions where it doesn't know the context.
I'm beginning to notice that there's a positive relationship between me being sick and me putting up posts.
So 16 days ago, I left Yaoundé to go to Bamenda in northwest Cameroon. No pull ups for me there. And one week ago on Sunday I was still in Bamenda, and while we were hiking outside a Fulani village, I slipped on the bed of a steam in the rain and gauged my right palm. I returned from Bamenda on Monday. Since Friday (four days ago) I've been out sick with a stomach bug and haven't eaten very much. I've felt my muscles and my gut slowly fade away with a nice view of my scrawny bones taking their place.
This morning, I woke up at 5am and was feeling quite motivated to accelerate my return to good health, so I jumped on the pull-up bar (i.e., my shower rod). To my surprise, each repetition was much easier than I remember it being. I was able to do a set of eight pull-ups with very little effort, despite being way out of shape. I must have lost a ton of weight. Or at least, it seems like it. Before I got sick, I guess I weighed 145 lbs. Last night I weight myself in at 140 lbs. Does 5 lbs really make that much of a difference? And I was expecting my upper body strength to fade a lot faster than that. How quickly does that go?
So, I'm laying here on the couch with an uncomfortable stomach ailment, with little that I'm able to do but think, and I realize that I've written you next to nothing in the past to months. And I don't just mean on this blog; I mean in e-mails, prayer requests and cute little videos, too.
(Un)fortunately, it's not just because I'm lazy or busy, but because I have this newfound fear of sounding self-important (which I'm likely violating just by writing about it). I first noticed it during my first summer back home after I'd been in college. After spending nine months speaking in pompous, collegiate accents regarding only the most prodigious of matters, I came home, and people just couldn't understand me. My older brother first told me off for my big vocabulary, but I thought nothing of it (that's what older brothers are for). But then, a couple days later, I was talking to some ten-year-old, and he told me that I talked funny, that he couldn't understand me.
It's really haunted me since then. And it's sad. And now that I'm working for Wycliffe here in Cameroon, I want to share with everyone what's going on in my life. But, well, Christians can tend to put missionaries up on pedestals to start with; that last thing I need is to put myself up there by talking fancy. I was trying to write my first prayer letter like two months ago, and the big thing that came through when my friend Abar reviewed it for me was that I was talking (and by that I mean writing) oddly and unnaturally.
That's what I'm trying to cure myself of. Hopefully, but wasting a post and five minutes of your time to vent, I have cured myself of my fears and of my language problems, and I can now write about stuff like I really want to.
Who knows, maybe next time my writing style shifts to what I'd use for a college essay, folks will just wave it off because they realize that I have "issues" and they've come to terms with that.
There. It's done.